The Moz Blog

Neato - An Anchor Text Analysis Tool from WeBuildPages

Neato is a great tool from WeBuildPages (Jim Boykin & Todd Malicoat's excellent SEO shop). It analyzes backlinks (up to 1000 at a time) and their respective anchor texts. It's actually insanely valuable for the experienced SEO, as you can pretty much guage rankings in many competitive areas based on the anchors coming to you.

I think it's also got a good use as a way to see if your link building efforts "stick out like a sore thumb". I note that SEOmoz, which had completely natural links coming to it looks pretty different in terms of patterns than some sites for clients of ours. I'd love to see some comparisons of all-natural sites vs. all-SEOed sites - probably good information to glean from that.

Since I noticed this tool via DD's blog, I think it's worth mentioning that she's now a grandmother (along with being a top-notch SEO). Congrats Donna, to you and the newest member of your family.

Terrific tool and they do a great way of summarizing the anchor text information. I looked at anchor text for my links and those of competitors.
Some additional observations. 1. There are tons of spam sites out there linking into sites w/real content. In its own right that can be a huge number of links relative to your own direct link efforts.
That brings up a lot of questions such as:
What % of bls have you obtained directly versus ones from spam sites? How do these spam sites deliver anchor text? In my case They usually pull from the url, the TLD title, or an interior page title.
Assuming spam can contribute a lot of links to your site it emphasizes the importance of having titles and or urls that deliver the desired anchor text.
Again, back to spam links versus links you deliver on your own.
Assume you focus on high quality bls with powerful focused anchor text for your page. Is this diluted by a large volume of uncontrolled spam with potentially diffused anchor text.
Is there a percentage factor wherein the SE's (specifically google) distinguish the sources of bls or alternatively do all the bls add a little to your site's bl strength.
Finally the volume of bls, neatly sorted reminded me of a point I first saw months ago by jasonnytc at seo chat concerning his hypothesis that anchor text could be diluted based on the number of words used.
Suppose my preferred anchor text was red widgets and coincidentally I had a red widget store in Chicago, Illinois. That store had drawing power in nearby Gary Indiana. I could try and get anchor text that might reflect the following; red widgets, red widgets chicago, red widgets Illinois, red widgets Il, red widgets Chicago Illinois Gary Indiana, red widgets gary indiana, and if my store was called the Hot red widgets store chicago illinois - i could have that as anchor text.
With all those different potential anchor text possibilities how does that impact your anchor text and allinanchor listing for red widgets. Does anchor text hot red widgets store chicago illinois dilute the anchor text evaluation for red widgets by 2/3 because there are 4 extra words in that example (hot....store chicago illinois).
Lots more questions but I love the tool
Dave